Presidential Approval or Generic Ballot?

Nate Cohn: “Usually, election watchers can get a good read on the mood of the electorate by looking at presidential approval ratings or at the generic ballot, which asks voters which party they would prefer to control Congress. Historically, they’re fairly interchangeable. Leo happens to use the generic ballot; the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog uses the president’s approval rating.”

“This year, the two metrics are not so interchangeable. Mr. Obama’s approval ratings are stuck in the low 40s — around 42 percent… That’s lower than at this time in 2010, so it’s easy to see why so many have taken the president’s ratings as a sign of an impending catastrophe for Democrats…. The generic ballot, on the other hand, puts the Democrats ahead by about 2 points among registered voters. That’s nothing like 2010, when the Republicans had opened a 3-point lead on the generic ballot by early September after making steady gains over the summer.”